French concert music and jazz often enjoyed a special creative exchange across the period 1900-65. French modernist composers were particularly receptive to early African-American jazz during the interwar years, and American jazz musicians, especially those concerned with modal jazz in the 1950s and early 1960s, exhibited a distinct affinity with French musical impressionism. However, despite a general, if contested, interest in the cultural interplay of classical music and jazz, few writers have probed the specific French music-jazz relationship in depth. In this book, Deborah Mawer sets such musical interplay within its historical-cultural and critical-analytical contexts, offering a detailed yet accessible account of both French and American perspectives. Blending intertextuality with more precise borrowing techniques, Mawer presents case studies on the musical interactions of a wide range of composers and performers, including Debussy, Satie, Milhaud, Ravel, Jack Hylton, George Russell, Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck.

Using research, analysis and a range of historical sources, Paul Weller and Popular Music immerses the reader in the excitement of Paul Weller's unique creative journey, covering topics such as the artist's position within his field; his creative processes; the contexts in which the music was made; the artist as collaborator; signifiers that mark the trajectory of the music, and formative influences. Focusing on over 40 years of recorded work from the formative 'In the City' to 'True Meanings', this study places the music in a series of contexts that seek to explore why Paul Weller's music is widely considered both timeless and of its time.

- Applies a perspective rooted in popular music studies to understanding music in the parent-child relationship, offering a fresh take on the study of early childhood music - By bringing together popular music and early childhood, appeals across disciplines to popular music, media studies, and music education - Includes both case studies and broad analysis that draws together insights from across the literature, making this an engaging overview that can readily be used by students as well as researchers

An unorthodox musician from the start, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's style of composing, performing, and of playing (and tuning) the guitar is unique. In the framework of sexual difference and the gendered discourses of rock this immediately begs the questions: are Mitchell's songs specifically feminine and, if so, to what extent and why? Anne Karppinen addresses this question focusing on the kind of music and lyrics Mitchell writes, the representation of men and women in her lyrics, how her style changes and evolves over time, and how cultural context affects her writing. Linked to this are the concepts of subjectivity and authorship: when a singer-songwriter sings a song in the first person, about whom are they actually singing? Mitchell offers a fascinating study, for the songs she writes and sings are intricately woven from the strands of her own life. Using methods from critical discourse analysis, this book examines recorded performances of songs from Mitchell's first nine studio albums, and the contemporary reviews of these albums in Anglo-American rock magazines. In one of the only books to discuss Mitchell's recorded performances, with a focus that extends beyond the seminal album Blue, Karppinen explores the craft of Mitchell's songwriting and her own attitudes towards it, as well as the dynamics and politics of rock criticism in the 1960s and 1970s more generally.

How do musicians play and talk to audiences? Why do audiences listen and what happens when they talk back? How do new (and old) technologies affect this interplay? This book presents a long overdue examination of the turbulent relationship between musicians and audiences. Focusing on a range of areas as diverse as Ireland, Greece, India, Malta, the US, and China, the contributors bring musicological, sociological, psychological, and anthropological approaches to the interaction between performers, fans, and the industry that mediates them. The four parts of the book each address a different stage of the relationship between musicians and audiences, showing its processual nature: from conceptualisation to performance, and through mediation to off-stage discourses. The musician/audience conceptual division is shown, throughout the book, to be as problematic as it is persistent.

Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam "AD-ROCK" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the almost impossible-to-fathom overnight success of their debut studio album Licensed to Ill; that album's messy fallout; their break with Def Jam, move to Los Angeles, and rebirth as musicians and social activists, with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul's Boutique. For more than twenty years, this band has had a wide-ranging and lasting influence on popular culture.

With a style as distinctive and eclectic as a Beastie Boys album, Beastie Boys Book upends the typical music memoir. Alongside the band narrative you will find rare photos, original illustrations, a cookbook by chef Roy Choi, a graphic novel, a map of Beastie Boys' New York, mixtape playlists, pieces by guest contributors, and many more surprises.

* first of a kind to explore the topic of contemporary Chinese jazz, and unique in examining phenomena of contemporary music in China * exposes the insiders' views of the very people - jazz musicians, teachers, students, producers and fans - who in their daily practices first created and developed Chinese jazz. * offers a unique study of the vibrant culture in China, with an exclusive comprehensive view on the increasing importance of music and urban culture in the everyday lives of Chinese people. * engages debates in jazz and popular music studies related to place, identity, education, creativity, individuality, politics, economy, society and cultural development in contemporary China.

The song remains the most basic unit of modern pop music. Shaped into being by historical forces-cultural, aesthetic, and technical-the song provides both performer and audience with a world marked off by a short, discrete, and temporally demarcated experience. One-Track Mind: Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song brings together 16 writers to weigh in on 16 iconic tracks from the history of modern popular music. Arranged chronologically in order of release of the tracks, and spanning nearly five decades, these essays zigzag across the cultural landscape to present one possible history of pop music. There are detours through psychedelic rock, Afro-pop, Latin pop, glam rock, heavy metal, punk, postpunk, adult contemporary rock, techno, hip-hop, and electro-pop here. More than just deep histories of individual songs, these essays all expand far beyond the track itself to offer exciting and often counterintuitive histories of transformative moments in popular culture. Collectively, they show the undiminished power of the individual pop song, both as distillations of important flashpoints and, in their afterlives, as ghostly echoes that persist undiminished but transform for succeeding generations. Capitalism and its principal good, capital, help us frame these stories, a fact that should surprise no one given the inextricable relationship between art and capitalism established in the twentieth century. At the root, readers will find here a history of pop with unexpected plot twists, colorful protagonists, and fitting denouements.

* explores the creative dialogue between John Lennon and Paul McCartney * employs the author's own 'Songscape' analysis, a multi-layered approach designed to engage a recorded work on its own terms, that does not require any specialist knowledge. * discusses the move towards more intimate sound spaces made possible by the recording process itself. *draws together evidence that Lennon and McCartney's uniquely eclectic approach, which came to encompass music, recording, film, literature, theatre, and painting, can be traced back to the Liverpool College of Art.

Sprung from the roots of 70s hard rock, Metallica defined the look and sound of 1980s heavy metal, just as Led Zeppelin had for hard rock and the Sex Pistols for punk before them. Inventors of thrash metal--Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth followed--it was always Metallica who led the way, who pushed to another level, who became the last of the superstar rockers.

Though plagued by adversities, including the death of their bassist in a bus crash, infighting and substance abuse, they survived to became the biggest-selling band in the world. With 100 million records sold worldwide, their music has extended its reach beyond rock and metal, and into the pop mainstream, as they went from speed metal to MTV with their hit single "Enter Sandman." Until now there hasn't been a critical, authoritative, in-depth portrait of the band. Mick Wall's thoroughly researched, insightful work is enriched by his interviews with band members, record company execs, roadies, and fellow musicians. He tells the story of how a tennis-playing, music-loving Danish immigrant named Lars Ulrich created a band with singer James Hetfield and made his dreams a reality. "Enter Night" delves into the various incarnations of the band, and the personalities of all key members, past and present--especially Ulrich and Hetfield--to produce the definitive word on the biggest metal band on the planet

The first narrative biography of the Bee Gees, the phenomenally popular vocal group that has sold more than 200 million records worldwide--sales in the company of the Beatles and Michael Jackson. "The Bee Gees" is the epic family saga of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, and it's riddled with astonishing highs--especially as they became the definitive band of the disco era, fueled by "Saturday Night Fever" and crashing lows, including the tragic drug-fueled downfall of youngest brother, Andy. In recent years, a whole new generation of fans has rediscovered the undeniable grooves and harmonies that made the Bee Gees and songs like "Stayin' Alive," "How Deep is Your Love," "To Love Somebody," and "I Started a Joke" timeless.

Listening to the sound practices of bands and musicians such as the Asian Dub Foundation or M.I.A., and spanning three decades of South Asian dance music production in the UK, Transcultural Sound Practices zooms in on the concrete sonic techniques and narrative strategies in South Asian dance music and investigates sound as part of a wider assemblage of cultural technologies, politics and practices. Carla J. Maier investigates how sounds from Hindi film music tunes or bhangra tracks have been sampled, cut, looped and manipulated, thus challenging and complicating the cultural politics of sonic production. Rather than conceiving of music as a representation of fixed cultures, this book engages in a study of music that disrupts the ways in which ethnicity has been written into sound and investigates how transcultural sound practices generate new ways of thinking about culture.

The Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals and fans of the band. It brings together international researchers to assess, evaluate and reformulate approaches to the critical study and interpretation of one of the world's most important and successful bands. For the first time, this Handbook will 'tear down the wall,' examining the band's collective artistic creations and the influence of social, technological, commercial and political environments over several decades on their work. Divided into five parts, the book provides a thoroughly contextualised overview of the musical works of Pink Floyd, including coverage of performance and sound; media, reception and fandom; genre; periods of Pink Floyd's work; and aesthetics and subjectivity. Drawing on art, design, performance, culture and counterculture, emergent theoretical resources and analytical frames are evaluated and discussed from across the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. The Handbook is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals. It will appeal across a range of related subjects from music production to cultural studies and media/communication studies.

How Music Empowers argues that empowerment is the key to unlocking the long-standing mystery of how music moves us. Drawing upon cutting-edge research in embodied cognitive science, psychology, and cultural studies, the book provides a new way of understanding how music affects listeners. The argument develops from our latest conceptions of what it is to be human, investigating experiences of listening to popular music in everyday life. Through listening, individuals have the potential to redefine themselves, gain resilience, connect with other people, and make a difference in society. Applying a groundbreaking theoretical framework to postmillennial rap and metal, the book uncovers why vast numbers of listeners engage with music typically regarded as 'social problems' or dismissed as 'extreme'. In the first ever comparative analytical treatment of rap and metal music, twenty songs are analysed as case studies that reveal the empowering potential of listening. The book details how individuals interact with rap and metal communities in a self-perpetuating process which keeps these thriving music cultures - and the listeners themselves - alive and well. Can music really change the world? How Music Empowers answers: yes, because it changes us. How Music Empowers will interest scholars and researchers of popular music, ethnomusicology, music psychology, music therapy, and music education.

The story of The Wailers is a litany of betrayal and greed that's rarely been reported elsewhere. Written in collaboration with Family Man and other surviving members, "The Wailers' Story" reveals the truth behind the Marley legacy. The Wailers played with Bob Marley on all of his hit singles and albums - records that have sold an estimated 250 million copies worldwide, and established Marley himself as a cultural and musical icon. This book traces the early lives of the Barrett brothers before they joined Marley in the '60s and discusses how reggae artists like Lee 'Scratch' Perry influenced the band. It includes insider accounts of the assassination attempt on Marley's life and his exile in London. It examines how hits like 'Exodus', 'Waiting In Vain', 'No Woman No Cry', and 'I Shot The Sheriff' were made - songs that have helped change the face of popular music.

Sixties British rock and pop changed music history. While American popular music dominated the record industry in the late fifties and early sixties, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous other groups soon invaded the world at large and put Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based on personal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving into the competition between performers and the recording industry for control over the music. He interviews session musicians who recorded anonymously with the Beatles, Hermans Hermits, and the Kinks, professional musicians who toured with British bands promoting records or providing dance music, songwriters, music directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the best-known performers of the era. The consequences of World War Two for pop music in the late fifties and early sixties form the backdrop for discussion of recording equipment, musical instruments, and new jet-age transportation, all contributors to the rise of British pop-music alongside the personalities that more famously made entertainment news. And these famous personalities traverse the pages of Please Please Me as well: performing songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend took center stage while the production teams and session musicians created the art of recording behind the doors of Londons studios. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process. Opening up important new historical and musical understandings in a repertoire that is at the core of rock music's history, Please Please Me will appeal to all students, scholars, and fans of popular music.

This autobiographical portrait of Tom Waits takes shape through a selection of more than 50 interviews. Starting with the first interview--on KPFK-FM's "Folkscene" in 1973--Waits speaks out on a variety of topics and shares something truly unique with his readers. In a rap that is a synthesis of inflections--Louis Armstrong, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, hobo, pool hall attendant, vaudevillian huckster, musicologist par excellence, and a fresh slathering of the organic word-ooze of William S. Burroughs--Waits comes across as well read, informed, and lucidly aware of current pop culture. He delivers prose as crafted, poetic, potent, brilliant, and haunting as the lyrics of his best songs.

Founded in 1917, Paramount Records incongruously was one of several homegrown record labels of a Wisconsin chair-making company. The company pinned no outsized hopes on Paramount. Its founders knew nothing of the music business, and they had arrived at the scheme of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive phonograph cabinets they had recently begun manufacturing. Lacking the resources and the interest to compete for top talent, Paramount's earliest recordings gained little foothold with the listening public. On the threshold of bankruptcy, the label embarked on a new business plan: selling the music of Black artists to Black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the "race records" era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by Black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong, Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly Roll Morton. Scott Blackwood's The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music etched into the shellacked grooves of a 78 rpm record. With Paramount Records, Black America found its voice. Through creative nonfiction, Blackwood brings to life the gifted artists and record producers who used Paramount to revolutionize American music. Felled by the Great Depression, the label stopped recording in 1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is among the most treasured and influential in American history.

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK Bessie Smith: singer, icon, pioneer. Scotland's National Poet Jackie Kay brings to life the tempestuous story of the greatest blues singer who ever lived. 'A gem of a book . . . beautiful.' BERNARDINE EVARISTO 'A wonderful writer on a magnificent singer.' ROBERT WYATT 'Kay's book is the amplifier that Smith's voice deserves.' SUNDAY TIMES 'The most vivid evocation of Bessie Smith I have ever read.' IAN CARR, BBC MUSIC BESSIE SMITH was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by the age of nine, she sang on street corners before becoming a big name in travelling shows. In 1923 she made her first recording for a new start-up called Columbia Records. It sold 780,000 copies and made her a star. Smith's life was notoriously difficult: she drank pints of 'bathtub gin', got into violent fist fights, spent huge sums of money and had passionate love affairs with men and women. She once single-handedly fought off a cohort of the Ku Klux Klan. As a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in Bessie someone with whom she could identify and who she could idolise. In this remarkable book Kay mixes biography, fiction, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life. 'Biographies don't usually bring the subject to life again. This one did. I finished the book then started it again immediately.' PEGGY SEEGER 'What a life! What gulpable storytelling! Exactly the kind of writing about music we need: personal, ardent, playfully confrontational, questioning, undogmatic. A love song to a complicated idol.' KATE MOLLESON 'Pure joy: one trailblazing woman pays tribute to another. Jackie Kay finds the music in the short, dazzling, capricious life of Bessie Smith.' HELEN LEWIS

Endorsed by Jamey Aebersold, James Moody, Dave Liebman, and others, The Jazz Theory Book presents all the information any student of jazz needs in an easy-to-understand, yet thorough, manner. For intermediate to advanced players, and written by one of the acknowledged masters of jazz, it is used by universities around the world.

In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, the editors bring together scholars engaged in the study of heavy metal music in Latin America to reflect on the heavy metal genre from a regional perspective. The contributors' southern voices diversify metal scholarship in the global north. An extreme musical genre for an extreme region, the contributors explore how issues like colonialism, dictatorships, violence, ethnic extermination and political persecution have shaped heavy metal music in Latin America, and how music has helped shape Latin American culture and politics.

The Poetry and Music of Joaquin Sabina: An Angel with Black Wings is a thoroughly researched exploration of the life, music, and song lyrics of the celebrated Spanish singer-songwriter Joaquin Sabina. Often called "the Spanish Dylan," Sabina has established his own highly poetic space over the course of his forty-plus years as a recording artist. Using selected song lyrics from his fifteen studio and three major live albums, Daniel J. Nappo analyzes Sabina's use of antithesis, simile, metaphor, synesthesia, rhyme, and other rhetorical and poetic devices. Nappo also devotes a chapter to Sabina's ability as a narrator and concludes the book with a comparison of Sabina's best work with that of the American singer-songwriter and Nobel laureate, Bob Dylan.

The music, image, performances, and cultural impact of some of the most enduring figures in popular music are explored in Rock Music Icons: Musical and Cultural Impacts. A rock music icon is readily recognizable-but intriguing and little-known stories lie behind the public's enchantment. Readers of Rock Music Icons will encounter new perspectives on notable recording artists ranging from Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and Bob Marley to Elton John, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, and Kurt Cobain. One meets Pink Floyd upon the fall of the Berlin Wall, the drama of Freddie Mercury, Ozzy Osborne, and Madonna, and the musical craft of Billy Joel. Rock Music Icons investigates authenticity, identity, and the power of the voices and images of these widely circulated and shared artists that have become the soundtrack of our lives. Rock Music Icons brings a reader an inside look into the creativity of some of the most prominent rock stars of our time.